On February 22, 1997, the world was shocked with the announcement that a lamb named Dolly had been born, the first mammal cloned from adult cells. The reaction was largely one of outrage – an emotional response that had little to do with the generic-looking lamb serenely staring back at us from our television screens. Everyone realized that if we could do it with sheep, then eventually we’d be able to do it with a human being.

The Book of Adam opens with the night of his birth, his mother cradling his small body as she ignores the protests outside her hospital window, determined to give the clone of her late father a normal and happy life. A wish made impossible by people both outside their hospital room and within it.

Adam’s autobiography encompasses more than a century of human experience, from the birth of his clone-father in the early 1970s and extending into the 2080s, his book exploring the social, religious, scientific, and highly personal ramifications of a time when it has become commonplace to have your genetic twin born after you’ve died.

His intimate memoir draws us into this intriguing world through his unique perspective – the bigotry he faces as a youth, the haunting dreams of the man from whom he was cloned, and Adam-2’s private battle for his soul. It’s a battle fought within an intergenerational family drama in which, like the House of Atreus, the players seem fated to struggle with the sins of the father.